Lounge
A young conservator shines the light on Ladakh’s art heritage
Summary
Noor Jahan is one of the region’s first art conservators from the local community
The summer of 2010 was a memorable one for Noor Jahan. She was home for the holidays from Delhi, where she was studying in college, when she bumped into a few foreigners in the old town precinct of Leh. They were part of a team carrying out conservation work in a Buddhist temple nearby. That brief interaction altered the course of her life. Noor Jahan started reading about the field of art conservation. Today, she is a part of the first generation of art conservators from Ladakh, having started her studio, Shesrig Ladakh, along with her cousin, Wajeeda Tabassumin, in Leh in 2017. “Entering this field happened by accident. The consciousness related to art or heritage came much later in life. But once it did, I could connect a lot of dots from the past," says Noor, 34, who doubles as the goalkeeper for the Indian national ice hockey team.
Art conservation in Ladakh was never considered a profession—at least not for the locals. They would watch international experts come in for projects and leave. The fact that Noor and her cousin chose to study this as a subject is unique. “About two decades ago, life was still pretty harsh in Ladakh. The priority was to earn a living, maybe through a government job or as a contractor. Once I joined school, the focus of the youth shifted towards becoming doctors and engineers. Art conservation and restoration was never considered a means of livelihood, so those in the field were mostly outsiders," Noor says.
Her shift to heritage conservation seemed natural since art—stupas, monasteries, paintings—was all around her while growing up. While visiting her maternal family in Hunder, Nubra Valley, she would be dropped off at Chamba Gompa, also called Maitreya temple. The 10-minute walk from there would take her past painted stupas. Her paternal grandfather was a carpenter, equally at ease designing and working on the construction of the bridge over the Indus river at Khalsi, or crafting the intricate interiors of the Jamia Masjid in Leh. Her father also makes traditional handmade jewellery and when time permits, Noor continues to assist him, having mastered the intricate gold thread work seen on Tibetan amulets or gawu. “ A lot of that is useful today when I am handling delicate artefacts," says Noor.
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To understand how and why Noor set up Shesrig Ladakh, it is important to look back at her journey. After graduation, she pursued a master’s degree in art conservation from the Delhi Institute of Heritage Research and Management. An internship with the Leh-based not-for-profit Himalayan Cultural Heritage Foundation allowed her to explore the field further, engaging with everything from documentation to restoration. This led to a hands-on experience of working on a wall painting at Diskit monastery. She enjoyed the process and decided to delve deeper in the field, eventually writing a master’s dissertation on the painted caves at Saspol, about 65km from Leh.
A month-long assignment on a 13th century-gateway stupa in Sumda Chun, near Leh, meant hiking a couple of hours from the road head and living with the locals. Working on paintings inside the Golden Temple involved spending hours high up on a ladder. Restoring a nun’s temple near Diskit needed a team of three women to spend weeks inside a gorge, tackling everything from a broken generator to guarding their stock of food from wildlife. “Some of the experiences were really raw, since I had lived in an urban setting all my life. It was a lot of learning while working in these environments," she says. It was while working on a PhD dissertation at the National Museum Institute in Delhi that Noor considered starting her own practice. When she spotted a decrepit home in old town Leh, she knew it was where she wanted to run her studio. Such a facility was vital for expanding the scope of the practice to restoring thangka paintings, old painted furniture, wooden artefacts and archival materials such as old texts and manuscripts, especially during the freezing winters. It wasn’t until five years after founding Shesrig Ladakh that they could finish restoring the home and get the studio functional.
The team of four women and one man have taken on projects of all kinds, a few through collaborations, some where they’ve been approached by local communities from around Ladakh and others that have been of personal interest. Funding is a constant issue. Their latest project, in July, took them to Mulbekh in Kargil district, where they finished restoring wall paintings at a 14th-century Buddhist temple. Last year, the structure had to be secured by architects before Noor and her team could begin work. “Each project needs its own solutions. For instance, during the Dogra invasion in mid-19th century, their army had set up base at the Mulbekh temple and had cooked inside it. So, besides the usual restoration work, we also had to clean the grime left behind on the paintings," elaborates Noor.
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Over the years, she’s seen a number of sites perish due to climate change as well as human activities. The excess rainfall that Ladakh has witnessed over the last decade poses a constant threat to traditional mud structures. Construction and development work has also had a detrimental effect on heritage sites. One of the issues that she faces is getting local stakeholders to realise what her work entails. There have been occasions when she’s realised that it’s easier to raise funds for a new temple than preserve an older one. The team has seen printed paintings stuck over the original work in some places.
“A few do understand our work, but there are a lot of folks who expect things to look brand new once we are done. Not many know what conservation and restoration means. So, whenever we work on a project, we invite the community, especially the kids, to come and watch us," she says. “The understanding of heritage and how people perceive it will be key for this region in the time ahead."
Shail Desai is a Mumbai-based freelance writer.
